Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The article’s main objective was to characterize the assumptions of civil protection in Poland in the context of the National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland as of 2020. As a result of the study, it was found that in the document of strategic importance, which is the National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland in force since 2020, a lot of attention was paid to the issue of the security of the state and its citizens – the entire first pillar, which is also the main national interest of Poland. Within this pillar, particular importance was attached to the management of national security, state resilience and general defence, the Polish Armed Forces, cybersecurity and information space.

The article studies the legal basis for providing civil protection and protection of critical infrastructure in Ukraine under martial law. In particular, the authors draw attention to the fact that, as of today, the issue of providing civil protection and protection of critical infrastructure in Ukraine is crucial due to the Russian Federation’s encroachment on its territorial integrity and inviolability, starting in 2014. This problem has gained particular urgency since the open military full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine, which took place on February 24, 2022. Summarizing the conclusions of the conducted scientific research, based on the analysis of the levels of formation and implementation of the state policy of Ukraine in the field of civil protection and protection of critical infrastructure, in the system of its subject composition, the author considers it appropriate to single out: subjects of the policy of civil defense and protection of critical infrastructure at the national level; issues of the policy of civil security and safety of critical infrastructure at the industry (sectoral) level; civil protection and essential infrastructure protection policy subjects at the local level; issues of the policy of civil security and safety of critical infrastructure at the object level (at the enterprise, institution, organization).

The full-scale war of Russia against Ukraine made the Ukrainian state and society face challenges that any other European country had never met in the XXI century. In the fight against external aggressors, both state and civil society in Ukraine, which used to be opponents rather than partners, began to work together to defend the people and the condition successfully. The article studies some current problems and proposes ways of improving the work of civil society institutions in terms of wartime. This interaction between civil society and the authorities brings all functional needs and resources together to help the population during a full-scale war. The authorities are aware that the position and role of civil society are critical and weighty for defeating the common enemy.

Based on the results of the research the following conclusions were formulated: 1) martial law in Ukraine has a direct impact on the unified state civil protection service, causes the presence of features of its functioning, as well as checking the state of readiness of services and forces that perform civil protection tasks; 2) in Ukraine, the bodies, services, forces of civil defense function simultaneously in two legal regimes: martial law and a particular period with a degree of complete readiness. In addition, the so-called “reconstruction period” is foreseen, which determines the additional tasks of the unified state civil protection service, the full implementation of which is possible after the end of hostilities and is actually implemented in the territories controlled by Ukraine and where there are no combat clashes; 3) the peculiarities of the functioning and diagnostics of the services and forces that perform civil defense tasks during the steam regime of martial law include: an increased degree of threats and risks due to missile attacks, kamikaze drone attacks, attacks from various types of weapons, and subsequently rescuing people from under rubble, liquidation of other consequences of destruction; a limited deadline for completing tasks; the need to restore critical infrastructure facilities related to the provision of electricity and gas supply as a result of rocket attacks; carrying out the evacuation of the civilian population in the zone of active hostilities; the presence of emergency situations with a wide variety of consequences, including those of a potentially man-made nature, which have a cross-border impact on neighboring states both in the short and long term.

The Russian Federation, with its plans to regain influence over former Soviet bloc countries, currently constitutes the main military danger for the EU and NATO. Because the war is so close to the EU’s borders, European allies have every reason to increase army financing instead of fuelling a transatlantic disagreement about burden sharing. This article deals with the question of whether the high strategic threat posed by Russia has increased military spending among European allies and decreased free-riding practices after 2014. To analyse this problem, we applied Spearman’s Rank Correlation test and then made a comparative analysis of 21 countries that are both EU and NATO members. Our results confirmed that European allies did not react in the same way to the Russian threat. We proved that strategic factors played a key role in the majority of Eastern European members of NATO, but not across Western European allies.

The article presents an in-depth identification of the polemological aspects of research on the subject of wars and armed conflicts of the 21st century. Moreover, it discusses the evolution, scale and nature of contemporary, as well as future wars and armed conflicts. The article refers to the essence, properties and characteristics of ‘new wars’ and the possibility of studying them by using appropriate instruments. Based on the conducted research, an attempt is made at forecasting wars and armed conflicts of the future. The article also highlights the activities and functioning of contemporary research institutes and facilities engaged in the analysis of war and armed conflicts, and focuses on the legitimacy and needs of implementing the polemological approach to the research of the presented subject in the present global-informational security conditions.

The elementary interest of every country is to maintain its inner security and stability. To achieve this goal the state must restrict within legal frameworks some fundamental rights of its own citizens. One of these fundamental rights is the right to privacy that can be breached only under certain circumstances. It is easy to see that it is unacceptable for a state not to control within the legal frameworks the communication of its own citizens so they can commit crimes, run terrorist rings, or spy rings or establish drug cartels without any consequences. Of course, the control over the communication is not the only means of the successful investigation but undeniably a vital one. That is why the Janus faced nature of the Dark Web is a real security risk nowadays. Although this new medium is the fruit of the last two decades its presence today is stronger than ever before and its popularity is growing day by day. Its most important features are anonymity, hidden geolocation and freedom from censorship. The Dark Web is very useful when it provides anonymity for political dissidents and whistleblowers, but is very harmful when it provides the same features for arm and drug traffickers and terrorists not to mention for pedophiles and so on. This article aims to shed some light on the effects of the Dark Web on the security and economy of the states especially in the aspects of organized crime and the terrorism.

Polemology and irenology that have been evolving since the Second World War are relatively unknown. There is much misunderstanding about polemology and irenology and what can be done with research results. The methodological competition between polemology and irenology indicates their differences due to the opposite research subject (war-peace), the system of concepts, and the usefulness of research results. The aim of the article is to present the basic assumptions of irenological and polemological research and to propose a common area of research on peace and armed conflicts. The article presents a thesis about the need to integrate polemological and irenological research. Due to the research problem and the subject of research, a qualitative strategy and appropriate research methods were used in the research process. The obtained research result indicates that it is not justified to conduct research on peace and armed conflicts separately, but as a whole as a study of peace and armed conflicts. The conclusions from the research indicate that the genesis, diagnosis and prognosis of peace and conflict-related processes is justified in the range of long cycles from minus 50 to plus 50 years in relation to the started research process.

Although the issues of military studies are increasingly analysed in the framework of political science, the representatives of international relations and military studies use different ways of interpreting military power – one of the key aspects of military studies. With the intention of expanding the possibilities of applying theories of international relations to military studies, this article aims to show the need for a synthesis of theoretical insights into neoclassical realism and military studies for scientific interpretation and research of the military power structure. The inducement of inter-paradigmatic debates by revealing and comparing military power explanation methods reflects a theoretical attempt to expand the possibilities for the application of international relations theories on warfare studies. Although the application of neoclassical realism theory to the explanation of military power is not new, this study explores broader possibilities of the application of this theory. The study substantiates the influence of non-material resources and unit-level variables on the structure of military power while making the assumption that neoclassical realism creates conditions to reveal the process of military power conversion but not the content of military power.

Securitisation is an intersubjective process of construing new categories or subcategories of security by identifying existential threats, the alleviation of which requires extraordinary measures and social acceptance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, both during the near-total lockdown, as well as in the period where restrictions were loosened, the messages presented in public space, calling for specific behaviours, displayed certain signs of this process – the limitation of citizens’ rights without the introduction of a state of emergency, as provided for by law, was carried out on the grounds of an extraordinary threat (threat of infection, illness or even death) the eradication of which requires extraordinary measures (depriving citizens of the possibility of moving, working, learning, taking advantage of entertainment or pursuing their passions, as well as imposing an order to wear masks and maintaining social distance) to be applied, which ˜– on the one hand – were introduced under the pain of punishment, while on the other, they were supposed to be met with general acceptance as rational and just. The following paper presents the results of a study of communications appearing in the public space in the period from March to August 2020 in Poland, which were to support the process of securitisation of the pandemic threat.